Weekly Goals 30-6-25

 I got some writing done over the weekend, but not as much as I would have liked.  There just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I need to do at the moment.  It's my ideal situation to have one book about to release, one I'm trying to sell, and one I'm working on, but it does create a lot of work.

I'm busy contacting reviewers and doing marketing stuff for the one about to release,  querying the one I'm trying to sell, and attempting to find time to write the one I'm working on.  It's a lot.

And this week is more of the same.

I only had one more rejection for A Stranger to Kindness over the weekend, so that's good.  And I've had three reviewers say they'd like to review Standing Too Close so far.  

So this week, my goal is to just keep it up.  Work on the new book, write to reviewers and send out a query or two each time a rejection comes in.  I've been playing with different versions of the query again, seeing if I can make a better one by mashing together a couple of different ones.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 27-6-25

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend! 

With having had a holiday on Monday, it was a short week, but busy.  Lots to do at work, and I'm starting to send ARCs of Standing too Close out to reviewers as well as continuing to query A Stranger to Kindness and keep working on the new book(s).  Not much spare time, I tell you!

Only more rejection this week, so far.  They all seem to come on Sundays, though.

I have my girlfriends coming around for a potluck on Saturday, which should be fun.  Otherwise, it's just a regular weekend.  Hopefully I'll get some writing done in there somewhere.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've read: What the Woods Took

I know you're not supposed to judge books by their covers, but the cover was what attracted me to this one.  Then I read the blurb, and knew I wanted to read it. I'm kind of fascinated - in a kind of horrified way - by wilderness therapy programmes.  So a wilderness therapy programme as a setting for a horror with monsters?  Go ahead and take my hard-earned money.

The book opens with Devin, an unruly foster kid who's been in trouble for years, being dragged out of her bedroom by a couple of strangers  Next thing she knows, she's deep in the Idaho woods with a group of other, equally confused kids.  Eventually, a couple of counsellors tell them they're in a wilderness therapy programme and they have fifty days to survive out here and to change their destructive behaviour.

Initially determined to escape, Devin keeps herself apart from the other kids, especially the bitch Sheridan, a lavender-haired bully who does her best to tear apart every exercise the group undertakes.  But as they get deeper into the woods, strange things start happening.  Faces from their pasts start appearing amongst the trees.  And then suddenly, both counsellors disappear, leaving the kids alone with no map and no certainty that the food drops they've been receiving will still come.

As they try to figure out how to save themselves, it becomes apparent that perhaps the shape-shifting monsters creeping between the trees are not the most dangerous threat they're facing.   it might be each other.

This was one of those books that so beautifully weaves together real life and mythological horror.  It's eerie and atmospheric and has some excellent characters who really grow and change across the course of the book.  Some of the "issues" that brought the kids to the therapy camp were a little slight, in my opinion, but that probably reflects more on those kids' parents than on them.

So, overall, I would recommend this one.  It's creepy and fast-paced and quite genuinely scary in places - although not always in the ways you would expect.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

Yellowjackets meets Girl, Interrupted when a group of troubled teens in a wilderness therapy program find themselves stranded in a forest full of monsters eager to take their place.

Devin Green wakes in the middle of the night to find two men in her bedroom. No stranger to a fight, she calls to her foster parents for help, but it soon becomes clear this is a planned abduction—one everyone but Devin signed up for. She’s shoved in a van and driven deep into the Idaho woods, where she’s dropped off with a cohort of equally confused teens. Finally, two camp counselors inform them that they've all been enrolled in an experimental therapy program. If the campers can learn to change their self-destructive ways—and survive a fifty-days hike through the wilderness—they’ll come out the other side as better versions of themselves. Or so the counselors say.

Devin is immediately determined to escape. She’s also determined to ignore Sheridan, the cruel-mouthed, lavender-haired bully who mocks every group exercise. But there’s something strange about these woods—inhuman faces appearing between the trees, visions of people who shouldn't be there flashing in the leaves—and when the campers wake up to find both counselors missing, therapy becomes the least of their problems. Stranded and left to fend for themselves, the teens quickly realize they’ll have to trust each other if they want to survive. But what lies in the woods may not be as dangerous as what the campers are hiding from each other—and if the monsters have their way, no one will leave the woods alive.

Atmospheric and sharp, What the Woods Took is a poignant story of transformation that explores the price of becoming someone—or something—new.

Weekly Goals 23-6-25

 I shouldn't have said anything about not getting rejections on Friday.  I got three in a single day over the weekend.  So I sent out a handful more yesterday.  I think I may need to tweak the query again because this one really doesn't seem to be doing the trick.  Just not sure what else I need to add.

Made some progress with the new book over the weekend and tested my idea about the diary pages blowing away with one of my CPs, and she thought it was a great idea.  So I'm going to write a couple more random entries that can go in between where I left off and where the next big thing happens, and then I can start writing the meatier stuff.

I have a writing day ahead of me today, so I'm hoping to get a good chunk done.  I also have to decide if I want one of the things I thought I might write in Devon's section to happen.  The more I think about it, the more I wonder if it's the right choice for the story.

I have a busy week ahead with a lot of film-related stuff to do, so probably won't get a chance to write much again until next weekend, so I had better get some real work done today.

With Standing Too Close on pre-sale, I'm going to try and ramp up social media a bit to get it out there.  I've sent all the materials to the publicist doing a little book tour for me around the release week, and I will start reaching out to reviewers who have enjoyed my books previously to see if they'd like a crack at this one too.  I have ARCs, if you'd like to review it.  Just shoot me an email.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 20-6-25

 

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend! And it's Matariki.

Standing Too Close is now available for pre-sale.  Very excited by that!  Pre-sales are so important for an author and really help a book launch well, so if you have a spare $5 lurking in your pocket, I'd really appreciate it if you'd pre-order this beautiful little story.  Think of it as a treat for your future self.  Come 8 August, you'll probably have forgotten you bought it, so when it shows up in your e-reader, it'll be a nice surprise.

Haven't got as much writing done during the week as I had hoped to, but plan to get some real time over the next few days.  Our Board gifted us an extra day of leave on Monday, so I plan for that to be a writing day.

I think I'm a little stuck because I know where I want to go with the story, and what happens when I get there, but I can't figure out how to get there without having to write a whole pile of journal entries that don't really drive the plot.  At this point, Arlo's used up all the pages in his notebook and is writing his journal on whatever paper he can find - receipts, newspaper, movie tickets - so it would be realistic if he lost a bunch of them, but is that a cop out?  I felt like I could just re-start at a point where he gets a new notebook and then we could skip over a couple months where nothing much happens.  thoughts???

Had two more rejections for A Stranger to Kindness this week.  So, I sent out a handful more queries.  Beginning to think this is going to be just like the last two books I queried and get no requests.  Which is so frustrating when I know the book is good.  I guess I just don't know what agents and publishers are looking for anymore.

What are you celebrating this week?  

Books I've Read: The Sunset Crowd

 

I picked this book up at the library because it sounded like it could be a fun read. I mean, Hollywood in the 1970s?  Kind of right up my alley, right?  

The book is told through the eyes of Bea Dupont, a New York rebel who wound up in LA after a stint is an exclusive Swiss boarding school and a failed attempt at college.  Making a living as a photographer, Bea is part of the downtown LA scene because of her profession, but isn't wholly a part of it.  her position behind the lens gives her a unique perspective and it from this viewpoint we meet the rich and famous characters that populate her world.

There's Evra, the daughter of Hollywood royalty who has turned her back on movies and makes her living by clothing the elite and famous from her iconic store, Sunset on Sunset. She parties with models and rock stars and sleeps beside the hottest up and coming screenwriter in Hollywood, Kai de la Faire.

Bea is Kai's oldest friend, having been to school with him in Switzerland. He wa the subject of her first great photograph and she's harbored a crush on him since she was fifteen.

When Theodora Leigh steps into Sunset one day, returning costumes from the Paramount lot, she catches everyone's eye.  Not only is she strikingly beautiful, but she speaks perfect mandarin and ushers through a $30K sale in Evra's store without blinking an eye.  

Before long, she's a part of the crowd, using every connection and invitation to advance her dream of producing a movie.  It's not until the group reach the Riviera and the Cannes Film Festival that the truth starts to be revealed and Theodora's facade begins to come down.

This was a fast-paced book full of intrigue and jealousy.  Theodora was a delightful villain, the depth of her ruthlessness and ambition revealed little by little as the pages turn.  And this is a rarified world few of us ever get to experience, so it was fun to get taken to these glamorous places and events, and to brush shoulders with the rich and privileged.

I do have to say, I wasn't a huge fan of the ending.  I was there until they left Cannes and the delightful series of reveals that sent Theodora's facade crashing, but everything after that didn't quite ring true to me.  And after watching Bea hang on the fringes for so long, I really wanted her to get her moment in the sun.

But, if you liked Daisy Jones and the Six, this is a pretty good comp title for that, and you'll probably enjoy it too.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

From Rodeo Drive to the French Riviera, Karin Tanabe's The Sunset Crowd is a tale of survival and reinvention, of faking it until you make it, and the glittering appeal of success and stardom, as it seeks to answer that timeless question―who gets to have the American dream?

Money and fame: in 1970's Los Angeles, everyone is fighting to reach the top, but very few have the talent, ambition, and luck to get there.

Meet LA darling Evra Scott. The daughter of an Oscar-winning director and a Brazilian bombshell actress, Evra is the city's reigning style queen. By day, she's at the helm of Sunset on Sunset, the store beloved by Hollywood's young and beautiful. By night, she's on the arm of Kai de la Faire, Hawaii's hottest export, and the screenwriter of the moment.

Enter Theodora Leigh. The twenty-something Paramount assistant looks like a big screen star, but her sights are firmly set behind the scenes, as she fights to become a movie producer in a town where sex and sexism sell. Theodora's got the talent and instincts, but she's not willing to wait. Luckily, getting ahead by any means necessary is LA's mantra.

Observing it all is Bea Dupont, a photographer for Rolling Stone and Vogue, who never misses the party, but always keeps to its fringes. A Manhattan blue blood turned West Coast bohemian, Bea holds Evra's Sunset crowd together. She's also Kai's oldest friend, and she's harbored a not-so-secret flame for him since they met at an elite Swiss boarding school.

But in Hollywood, no one stays on top forever. And it's not long before Theodora's unrelenting ambition sets in motion a dramatic quest for power in an industry that is as glamorous as it is duplicitous. From Rodeo Drive to the French Riviera, The Sunset Crowd is a tale of survival and reinvention, of faking it until you make it, and the glittering appeal of success and stardom, as it seeks to answer that timeless question--who gets to have the American dream?

Weekly Goals 16-6-25

 I had a pretty busy, social weekend this week, so didn't get a ton of writing done.  I did add about 2K to the MS though and started writing Devon's parts for later in the book. I figure she'll take control for about 20K in total, so we'll see how I do there.  I have a 4-day weekend this week, so hope to get a lot done over those days.  The Monday is a bonus day off, so I'll go and do a full day at the library writing.

Had one more rejection for A Stranger to Kindness.  Disappointing because that agent's MSWL sounded like she really wanted that book.  Still have quite a few out there, but a couple are reaching that "no reply means no" kind of length of time, so might be written off.  

So the goals this week are to write, write, write.  And to send out another small handful of queries.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 13-6-25

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

I have quite a busy one this week, with two parties to go to tomorrow night and a movie to go to on Sunday - it's one of my all time favourite films, Sunset Boulevard which I'm pretty sure I've never actually seen in a cinema. So, looking forward to that.

I accidentally started a new book this week.  It's MG, which is not like me at all, but so far it's come really easily.  It is a story I've had hanging around for years though.  One of those books I wrote as a baby writer that never worked the way I wrote it.  I'm not putting any pressure on myself with it now, but it's kind of a fun thing to play around with.

It's been a long time since I had two novel projects on the go at the same time and I'm not sure how it's going to play out.  I'm definitely committed to Arlo and Devon's story first, but it's kind of fun to have an email window open to jot down bits and pieces of this other story whenever things come to me.  Which is how I've written what I have - I didn't realize it was close to 5K until I transferred it into Scrivener.  Quite a fun way to work, to be honest, no pressure, not work count awareness, just an email to myself to keep adding to as I wish to.

I hope to get some work done on Arlo and Devon's book over the weekend, but it probably won't be a lot to be honest.  Thankfully the following weekend is another long one, so I plan to get some serious writing done over that.

What are you celebrathing this week?

Books I've Loved: Glasgow Boys

 

I picked this book up at the library without really looking at what it was about, partly because I enjoyed Young Mungo and partly because the cover said something to me.  And boy am I glad I did!  This book could have been written for me.

It's about two boys in the foster system in Glasgow.  Finlay is 18 now, and out of care.  He's just starting a nursing degree at university and is struggling to balance coursework, a placement and the job he needs to keep himself fed.  He's always been shy and finds connecting with people both difficult and terrifying, yet he needs a support network in this new environment.  He's just not sure he can have it.  Not with Akash, the handsome medical student he hasn't seen since primary school, or with the two girls who seem determined to make him part of their group.

Banjo is a year younger and still at high school.  He's just been placed with a new family and has started a new school.  He wants desperately to stay here until he ages out, but is so filled with hurt and anger, he finds it difficult to contain and keeps getting himself into trouble. He meets an enticing girl at his new job and is quickly brought into her warm circle of family and friends, but even this isn't enough to keep him from seeking out violence to calm the rage blazing inside him.

Three years earlier, Banjo and Finlay were roommates at a care home and developed a bond that still ties them together, even though they haven't spoken in three years and both think their relationship has been damaged beyond repair.  

If these two boys are going to be able to move on, to love new people, they need to forgive each other and themselves.

Set against the grim background of Glasgow's working class, this book talked to my heart.  Both Finlay and Banjo are the kind of beautiful, broken boy I love to read about and, indeed, to write.  They have huge hearts, but have been so beaten up by life, it's hard for them to let them show.  There are definitely some massive parallels between this book and A Stranger to Kindness.  I understood these kids in a deep and powerful way.

It's a story about love and connection on so many levels.  Not a romance (but there are elements of that in there) it's really what I would call a true love story, a story examining all the different kinds of love that exist in the world.  And the power all those different loves haave to heal even the deepest of wounds.

So, I strongly recommend this one.  It's heartbreaking in all the best ways and will likely bring a tear to your eye more than once.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

A striking debut exploring the power of identity, community and the Scottish working class. This coming-of-age story is an incisive look at young masculinity and the way even the most fraught childhood is not without hope.

Neither Finlay or Banjo can remember the last time they had a hug.

Against all odds, 18-year-old Finlay has begun his nursing degree at Glasgow University. But coming straight from the care system means he has no support network. How can he write essays, focus on his nursing placement and stop himself from falling in love when he's struggling to feed himself? Meanwhile, 17-year-old Banjo is trying to settle into his new foster family and finish high school, desperate to hold down his job and the people it contains. But his anger and fear keep boiling over, threatening his already uncertain future.

Underpinning everything is what happened three years ago in their group care home, when Finlay and Banjo were as close as brothers until they stopped speaking. If these boys want to keep hold of the people they love, they have to be able to forgive one another. More than this, they must find a way to forgive themselves.

Weekly Goals 9-6-25

 Didn't get as much writing done over the weekend as I would have liked.  I'm at a point where I can't really move the plot to the next stage without the timeline being disrupted, so I need to think of some new plot things to happen in there to make the timing work.  Or just skip to the next bit I know the plot points and figure out how to fill things in later.  

With writing the book as journal entries, I can fill in a lot of dates with "nothing interesting happened" kind of entries, but I don't want to do weeks of those or the reader will get super bored.  But I also don't want to write a whole lot of stuff that's not important just to fill in the days.

So my goal this week is to figure out if I can switch up the timeline a bit and still have things work the way they need to.

And maybe to send a few more Stranger to Kindness queries out.  I got one more rejection over the weekend, but also sent out one more query because the book I just finished reading was so perfectly aligned with my own, I just had to query the author's agent.  Luckily she thanked her in the acknowledgments so she was easy to find.

What are your goals this week?

Cover Reveal: Standing Too Close

 It's that time!

Standing Too Close will be out in the world on 8 August and I'm excited to share the beautiful cover art!

Seventeen-year-old Blue Lannigan believes in exactly one thing: his two younger brothers deserve more than the crappy apartment and abusive, drunken mother they’re stuck with. And when he comes home to find one brother bruised and bleeding (again), the other cowering in terror (again) and their mother drunk off her ass, blaming all three of them for her tanked singing career (again), Blue decides waiting until he’s eighteen to leave is no longer an option. 

Deciding to hole up in an empty house at the lake until he can figure out what to do next, things get more complicated when the owner of the house arrives unexpectedly. Especially when Blue realizes the unconscious woman they’ve tied up on the couch isn’t a stranger after all, but someone who could give him just what he’s looking for.

After avoiding reality and playing house, a scene at the grocery store lands him in handcuffs and his brothers with a social worker. Add to that losing his job and being stuck in a group home he hates, and Blue’s sole purpose becomes finding his brothers and getting them out of whatever hellhole they’re in. Blue’s hopes unravel, and betrayal rips his heart in two as he tries to reconcile the role he plays in his brothers’ lives while trying to figure out his own.

Releasing 8 August 2025.

Celebrate the Small Things 7-6-25

 

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend! 

Winter appears to have arrived with a vengeance this week with wind and rain and cold.  Just in time for the weekend.  Luckily, I have very little planned for this weekend other than writing and the usual chores.

I didn't get much writing done during the week, but I did come up with an interesting plot thing that I'm going to go back and write into one of the chapters I wrote last week.  I think it opens things up a little more for future events and makes them more plausible. 

Only one rejection for A Stranger to Kindness this week.  I've sent off a few more queries too, to the agents who open only the first week of the month.  Fingers crossed one or more of them want to see more.

What are you celebrating this week?

IWSG - June 2025

It's the first Wednesday of the month so it's time for the Insecure Writers Support Group.

The awesome co-hosts for the June 4 posting of the IWSG are PJ Colando, Pat Garcia, Kim Lajevardi,  Melisa Maygrove, and Jean Davis!

 

This month''s question is a good one: 

What were some books that impacted you as a child or young adult?

There were a bunch of books that had a huge effect on me growing up.  I actually wrote a whole blog about The Outsiders and how much that book changed my life here, so I won't go into detail about how much S.E. Hinton's books impacted me.

As a lifetime reader - and I'm talking a really long time here; I learned to read at three and haven't stopped since - there are a lot of books that have affected me in different ways.

As a very small child (under five) I loved the picture books by Tomi DePaola, especially the ones about the witch Streganona.  I remember being taken to a bookstore to meet him once, and still have a copy of The Clown of God and Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs that he signed.

There's the Willard Price adventure books, all 13 of them from Amazon Adventure all the way through to Arctic Adventure.  I was utterly obsessed with these books from the time I was about eight until I was eleven or so and read and re-read them over and over.  A lot of what I know about nature and science and stuff like that comes directly from these books.  I re-read a handful of them again when my kids were young, thinking they might like them as much as I did.  But you know what?  They're actually kind of dreadful...

The same thing happened when I re-read The Eagle of the Ninth, another book I was obsessed with for a while when I was young.  I literally read two copies of this one to rags.  But it's really not that good.  Actually very boring..  What I saw in it, I don't know.

When I was a teenager, there were the Hinton books I mentioned earlier, but also a book called Center Line by Joyce Sweeney and one called Term Paper by Ann Rinaldi that had a big effect on me.  And one I can't remember the title of, but involved a bunch of kids digging a huge hole in their back yard.  If you know what I'm talking about, let me know...  I thought it was by Elizabeth Winthrop, but I couldn't find it anywhere in her catalogue so that might be me dreaming.

I did have a tendency to get obsessed by books as a kid.  We moved a lot and while we usually had access to a library, often they were small and not very good so I was forced to revisit my own bookshelves frequently.  And when I was young, YA wasn't what it is now, so once you graduated from the kids' section there wasn't anywhere to go but the adult section.

I read a lot of very age-inappropriate horror at twelve.

I feel like some books I re-read so many times their text has become part of my DNA.  Books that are so much a part of me, I'm not even sure they were things I read or things that actually happened to me.

I still can't tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing...

What books had an impact on you? 

Weekly Goals 2-6-25

 I had such a successful writing day on Friday, I'm going to try and have another one today.  What better way to celebrate the King's Birthday, right?  I won't get the full day today because I have things I need to do this morning, but I plan to use the whole afternoon.  Hopefully I can add another 3000 words or so.

So, that's the main goal for the week.  To just keep writing the new book.

The other one is to send out a few more queries.  There are a bunch of agents that only open the first week of the month, so they're the ones I need to get to this week.  I still have quite a few queries out, but the longer they're sitting there, the more likely they are to be a pass, I think.  Especially with the number of no-response-means-no agents there are these days.

What are your goals this week?